Today, Americans will march in Washington, D.C. and all around the country demanding that Donald Trump release his tax returns. A majority of Americans think he should. But Fox News has resolutely stood by its man, not the American people.
Considering how Fox News demanded President Obama release his long-form birth certificate to prove he was American (even though it had already been proved), you might think the “fair and balanced” network would be even more eager to know whether Trump has financial ties to foreign countries or conflicts of interest with American policies.
But no. Now that there is a (white) Republican in the White House, Fox News has bent over backwards in order to defend Trump’s suspicious secrecy.
Media Matters did a roundup of Fox News hosts throwing 40 years of precedent out the window on behalf of helping Trump cover up his finances. The nine examples include Lou Dobbs, a Fox Business host appearing as a guest on The O’Reilly Factor on May 11, 2016. He said Trump should “absolutely not” release his tax returns because “he is facing a hostile national media.” Also on May 11, 2016, then-host Greta Van Susteren advised Trump not to release his tax returns during his appearance on On The Record.
On July 27, 2016, Trump used Van Susteren’s advice as an excuse to keep his returns hidden.
Watch these examples below and see more at Media Matters.
And if you’d like to march to demand Trump release his taxes like every other president since 1976 and prove whether or not he owes money or has received money from any shady characters from Russia or anywhere else, whether he pays his fair share in taxes, whether he is so heavily in debt that he may be blackmailable or has any other financial conflicts of interest, you can find a march near you here.
Donald Trump graphic by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license.
Obviously liberals are to blame. So how does Fox News pull this off?
Get a camera crew to isolate a confrontation between a sympathetic vet in a wheel chair thumping his chest about defending the Constitution with some inarticulate young person in a mask who calls him “unpatriotic”. Then you start using this data-mined clip to make broad assertions and wave the flag.
For example, this single kid is proof our educational system has failed in its mission to preach patriotism. Huh? One kid – the “punk in the mask” to quote one curvy couch bobble-head – proves this? Nice long reach Fox News. Looking in the background I notice he’s the only person covering their face. Terrific spin Fox!
Then the bobble-heads do the Archie Bunker logic of send the kid to Syria for a good does of tyranny. Then he’ll understand American democracy and learn to vote Tea Party! In their extensive freedom-loving chest thumping they forget the irony of the self-proclaimed defender of the Constitution vet saying he pulled an America flag from another protester’s hands because he’d feared they would used their Constitutional guaranteed freedom of speech to burn it.
Call me intolerant. But I can’t take Fox News in but little tiny bits and I’m about to change channels.
Thanks to this site I have a whole archive of material that I will religiously bring up during the next administration run by adults. That’s assuming that the two biggest spoiled brats on the planetwdon’t get into a my-penis-is-bigger-than-yours spat over the next ten days.
